History of AIDS Infections: Cautionary Historical Tale from 1986

Here's my anecdote, my debut. When I was a teenager and later a twenty-something-year-old lad, nothing was more important to me than getting laid. In the late 1970s, I got laid a lot, about between five to ten times per month. Later on, I didn't get so much sex but loved it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is about history but more than just about history, it's the warnings that history has to offer.

Here's the tale:

I read the article in a Spanish language local news magazine that a friend gave me back in the summer of 1986. 

A certain young man named Julio was about to graduate from medical school and wanted to go out and party.  So he dressed well and went to a night club. 

While there, a gorgeous, 10 looking woman made eyes at him and smiled.  So he took her out to the dance floor. Afterward, they got better acquainted at a table over some drinks.  They danced some more and started making out, french kissing.

They left together to a motel for a hot night of sexual release.

He didn't use protection and she didn't protest.  RED FLAG there. Ignored.

They spent their bodies writhing on that bed and when it was all over, he was so tired that he fell asleep.  The dame left a while later.

At about 5:30 AM or six, he woke up all alone.

He checked to see if she'd stolen his rolex watch and his wallet with credit cards, etc.

Nothing. It was all there jus like he had left it when he took his clothes off.

But now, happy as a lark that nothing was gone, he noticed light coming from the bathroom of that motel room.

He wondered if she was still there like taking a shower or something. He knocked on the door. No answer. He opened it and entered.

Shock waves hit poor Julio in the face. Slowly he collapsed to his knees and held his face in his hands.  

His sexual conquest, his glorious feat of conquering the best looking woman in that club now became his horror.

He looked up again.

He stared in despair at the bathroom mirror with that message written in lipstick:

"WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF AIDS !" 

A year or two after reading that story, I went dancing myself but later that night I went home alone. No sex.

A woman I took to the dance floor told me she actually knew the guy in that story and that he was already dying.

Reading a story like this one is in some ways like reading history.

It's almost like a warning that says: "Revolutions devour (Eat and Swallow) their own children.  You go messing where you shouldn't be and get mixed up with the wrong crowd and you can lose your head.

I wasn't so eager to go get laid after reading that story in that magazine.  And I sure wouldn't go getting mixed up in some revolution and I avoid bad people like the plague.

You can get a whole lot of good wisdom from learning your history - starting with keeping yourself alive, for one.   Well, this was just one tiny little anecdote that metaphorically links the history of someone who played Russian roulette sexually with other histories of others who stayed alive and otehrs who perished.


Do yourself a favor, a big one.  Learn history. Read the posts that will be getting published in this blog and then go research them in other sources.  You can save your own skin many times by staying informed about the past.